Will Jeremy Hunt play it safe today?

This Budget is probably Jeremy Hunt’s last fiscal event before the election, and the Chancellor will want to at least set a fair wind for the Conservatives to head into polling day. That means giving voters a sense that sticking with the Tories is the safer option, offering them giveaways on tax and the sense that more tax cuts might be to come – as well as avoiding the sort of post-Budget rows that can define a government in all the wrong ways.

Hunt is expected to cut National Insurance by a further two percentage points, on top of the 2 point cut he made in the autumn. This is cheaper than cutting income tax, but has the disadvantage of being a tax that voters don’t fully understand or acknowledge in the same way. Tory MPs have already complained that repeating a cut the party didn’t get any thanks for in the autumn is a ‘definition of insanity’ approach.